Skip to Main Content

CGHS Instructor Resources (Canvas)

Turnitin Papers

Turnitin is a plagiarism checker tool used by CGHS in all courses. The tool is designed to be used constructively, to alert students and instructors to possible instances of not only plagiarism, but also AI-generated work. Please note that a Turnitin report indicating a suspected issue does not always correlate with academic dishonesty. Each case needs to be fully investigated before any allegations of academic integrity violations are made.

It is the responsibility of the instructor to review all Turnitin reports to determine adherence with the CGHS Academic Integrity policies.

When grading Turnitin papers, it is recommended you use the Canvas SpeedGrader, not the tools within Turnitin. The grading rubrics will be available in SpeedGrader, as will a link to the Turnitin Similarity Report. Also, make sure your comments are on the version of the SpeedGrader, not the Turnitin Similarity Report.  That will allow students to see your comments within Canvas.

Turnitin allows students to resubmit papers until the due date. If a student needs to submit or resubmit an assignment AFTER the due date, follow these steps:

  1. The student should send a message to the instructor using the Canvas Inbox and attach the assignment to that message.
  2. If the instructor feels a TII report is needed, the instructor can run the assignment through the Assignment Drafts in the Canvas orientation course in which they were enrolled.
  3. The instructor should grade the assignment, making notations via Track Changes, and then upload that annotated file to the assignment grading area and attach the file to the overall comments area.
  4. The rubric should be updated with comments and the final grade in each category.

Assignment Drafts Explained

In order to help students identify areas for improvement in their written assignments, each CGHS course has a link in the top module to Assignment Drafts.  This allows students to submit a draft of an assignment to Turnitin and receive an originality score, helping them see passages that may trigger questions of academic dishonesty or that need citation of sources.  

The Assignment Drafts submissions do appear in the grade book.  DO NOT GRADE THEM and DO NOT DELETE THEM!  If you do either, students will no longer be able to view their originality reports. Students are responsible for turning in their work in the appropriate assessment, so instructors should never have a need to grade the Assignment Drafts.

If you, as an instructor, wish to submit a student's work (discussion, wiki, journal, blog, etc.) you can use the Assignment Drafts feature in the Instructor Orientation course. This will allow you to view the Similarity Report to see if the student violated the Academic Honesty policy.